


Liar Liar

by zuojia



Category: So Nyuh Shi Dae | Girls' Generation
Genre: F/F, WHICH HAPPENED MONTHS AGO, also not surprising, i cannot believe i'm still like this, idk this ended up much angstier than i expected, taeyeon-centric bc would i be me otherwise???, this is me trying to give someone a bday gift while also trying to cope with sicagate, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3326027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuojia/pseuds/zuojia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taeyeon isn't sure what happened.</p><p>Her head knows. The thing in her chest doesn't always follow along so well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liar Liar

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (belated) birthday to my tumblr friend sooyougn!!

Taeyeon reads the comments. She would never admit it, aware of the fan fervor it would incite, but she’s very much tapped into what the Internet (the world) has to say about Girls’ Generation. They all are, for the most part. In the rare event that they actually have idle time to themselves, they like to peruse different sites every so often and laugh at what they find.

Sometimes it’s genuine laughter (the _things_ that come out of Photoshop now and then) and sometimes it’s not (the words are supposed to roll off of them at this point).

She knows better, she does. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. She can’t always help it; she’s constantly striving to do better, to _be_ better even though she knows it’ll never be enough for everyone. She tries anyway.

The words do roll off most days. The ones about _them_ are more complicated. Words that don’t bite, but theorize; words that attach her name to the other members.

They’re all aware of the pairings at this point. It’s almost a game to them anymore. Royal, ace, even deuce – they’re familiar with the terms. The words that stick are the ones they don’t have, the relationships that aren’t given a bigger entity.

The company reads the comments too. They never say anything to them explicitly, but then they never discourage anything explicitly either. They’re familiar with the terms too, and they know how the terms need to work for them. The company is just a company after all, and a successful one at that. Behind the shimmering production and pretty faces is a well-oiled machine. Taeyeon, like the rest of them, is just another cog in the wheel.

Except she’s not, or at least she isn’t anymore. The nine of them haven’t been old cogs for years now and they know it. They’re something closer to the engine, something made shinier and smoother than just another cog. It doesn’t always matter to her. They’re still parts, important as they may be. All parts are replaceable.

And all parts have roles. And like good-working parts, the girls perform those roles well. They sing, they dance, they remember the things the company doesn’t explicitly encourage or discourage. They smile a little brighter at someone one moment, lean in a little too close to someone else the next, and throw an arm around another after that. The wheels turn and the machine runs, just like that.

But things jam even in the finest of machines.

\---

Taeyeon isn’t sure what happened.

They don’t talk about it a lot. They don’t talk a lot period. It’s been getting better, but for the most part she remains painfully aware of how different it feels. She knows better than to expect anything else after everything.

(Her head knows. The thing in her chest doesn’t always follow along so well.)

But they are getting better, piecing themselves together in an almost identical fashion to how they fell apart: gradually, and without many words.

\---

They speak more, but they still don’t really talk about it. On good days they can laugh together, and for at least a few moments, it’ll feel like the old them.

They aren’t the old them though, just and _older_ them, and those moments never seem to last. They don’t play the game well anymore and they haven’t for some time.

(They’re tired, like the rest, and it hasn’t been just a game between them for years now.)

It’s hard to notice, though, the way they can still play the game with the other members. Over the last several years Taeyeon has developed a blind spot where Jessica’s concerned, but nobody’s perfect, _least of all her,_ and it slips too often for her liking.

She makes the associations in her head faster than she means to. Jessica hanging on Yoona’s shoulders. (Deuce.) Jessica holding hands with Tiffany. (Ace.) Jessica snaking an arm through Yuri’s. (Royal.)

The last one bothers her the most, for some reason, though she knows it shouldn’t. (It’s all completely irrational, really, but that doesn’t stop the feeling.) The last one cuts the closest to the thing they never talk about. That word. The company reads the comments too. Not explicitly demanded from them, but things definitely encouraged. And it worked perhaps too well a few years ago.

(Incidentally, it’s the same time when she and Jessica didn’t.)

Royalty for a reason.

Taeyeon knows. She played a part too. The feedback from that role still stings.

She must’ve been convincing.

\---

They all go out one night. It’s all boisterous fun until it’s over. They all stay at the dorm together for the first time in a long time. Most of them trudge into their room (or are carried there), already half-asleep.

Taeyeon lies in bed for twenty minutes staring at the ceiling. There’s enough alcohol in her so that things feel light even while her thoughts start to grow heavy, but it’s not enough to put her to sleep yet. This is how it always is.

Eventually, she gets up and wanders down the hall to the living room. She can fall asleep on the couch if she watches television for long enough.

She pauses when she finds Jessica there. Just Jessica. The sight throws her for a second, because Jessica hasn’t been there this late in a long time. Taeyeon smiles in the darkness even though the thought gnaws at her.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

Jessica’s voice sends a jolt through her. It’s quiet but firm, as usual. Taeyeon feels stupid for another moment, and then brave – she crosses the room and sits next to Jessica on the couch, close enough that the sides of their legs end up pressed together. Jessica turns her head to look at her. Taeyeon can’t see her face but she thinks she can feel Jessica’s breath on her neck.

(She’s not sure. It could be the alcohol. It could be a memory.)

After a couple of seconds Jessica turns her head away again. They sit without saying anything. The lights are off in the rest of the apartment and they leave the television off so that the only light in the room comes through thin slants in the shades. Taeyeon keeps glancing at Jessica’s profile, hoping her eyes will adjust to the darkness well enough to discern her expression, but it doesn’t happen.

“Is it weird?” she asks finally.

“Is what weird?”

“Being back here for the night.”

She feels Jessica shrug her shoulders. “I mean, I’ve stayed every so often in the past couple of years, so I wouldn’t say it’s weird. It’s just…”

“Different,” Taeyeon finishes.

“Yes.”

They fall back into silence for a few minutes.

“Why are you out here?” Jessica asks her.

It’s Taeyeon’s turn to shrug. “Can’t sleep. You?”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Soojung.”

“How is she?”

“Good…” Jessica’s voice trails off. Taeyeon bobs her head. They might as well be discussing the weather.

“Tired,” adds Jessica after a beat.

“So say we all,” Taeyeon mutters.

They let out heavy sighs at the same time. They sit again in silence for another several minutes. Jessica shifts a little beside her, and their shoulders brush. Suddenly, Taeyeon’s afraid Jessica’s already going to leave her.

“What happened to us?” she blurts.

Jessica pauses. Taeyeon can see the silhouetted outline of her profile turn to examine her. She stares back.

“The company happened,” Jessica tells her.

Taeyeon nods. “Right, give the fans what they want.”

“Which apparently, wasn’t us.”

The statement hangs in the air between them for a moment before Jessica speaks again.

“They wonder now though. They wonder about what happened to us too.”

“Oh.”

“I know you know. You just pretend not to.”

Taeyeon doesn’t answer. She looks away, an action they’ve both grown accustomed to. Taeyeon sighs a little.

“I guess it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

“Is it.”

Taeyeon looks back at her with a sharp, jerky movement; she winces and has to resist rubbing the back of her neck. She thinks she can just make out the curve of Jessica’s mouth smiling at her wryly. She realizes she can’t remember the last time they spent this much time alone together.

She looks away again. She can feel Jessica still watching her.

“You weren’t supposed to fall in love with _her_ ,” Taeyeon mumbles, her voice low. She picks at her fingernails in the dark.

She can feel Jessica turn taken aback, caught off guard by the remark. Taeyeon feels a little bit of anger and something else, something a little more painful, start to well up inside of her, and she knows it’s a tension mirrored in Jessica at the same time. They both know this means it’s time to stop again.

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Jessica returns in a quiet voice.

Taeyeon goes still, but doesn’t answer. Jessica looks away from her. She stands after a moment.

“And _I_ didn’t,” she adds.

Taeyeon watches her walk away, and there’s just enough light for her to see clearly that Jessica doesn’t look back.

\---

During their precious breaks between rehearsals and sets for the tour, Taeyeon does three things: sleep, eat, and read comments. In that order. There are other things spread throughout, but the three anchor her short routines.

Jessica’s right. Everyone wonders. Everyone wants to know what drove the group’s main vocalists apart. Everyone wants to know why they can’t seem to look at each other properly anymore. Everyone wants to know if they still care. Everyone wants to know if _Taeyeon_ still cares – if Taeyeon misses her.

But things have been getting better.

So Taeyeon’s indifferent. Taeyeon doesn’t miss her.

How could she? Jessica’s right _there._ She sees her everyday. They stood less than a foot apart during final bows just last night. What is there to miss?

And yet.

And yet when Taeyeon can’t sleep she sits on the couch now without the television on, and thinks about the long conversation they had. Something in her chest tightens when she thinks of their legs pressed side by side, the warm presence of Jessica next to her. She stays awake long enough that some nights she thinks she hears the door open behind her. (She always looks, but it’s mostly just her imagination. And on the days when it’s not, it’s still never Jessica.)

And yet her heart leaps at the sight of any wavy, light brown hair falling over shoulders, making its way through the halls of the company building. (It’s never her, and Taeyeon has known her long enough to recognize her without a second thought, but her heart still leaps every time.) She pauses at the sound of high-pitched laughter. (It’s never her, but she has to check every time, just in case.)

And yet she doesn’t just read the comments. She looks at the pictures people tag her in and scrolls through one long feed of the old them. She watches the old clips people send her, reminders of what they used to be. She finds them on her own too, watches younger versions of themselves with different hair and brighter smiles laugh and sing and dance together.

And yet Taeyeon watches their old interviews, watches a younger Jessica talk about how her schedules stopped matching the ones of a younger Taeyeon. When did they get so old? Taeyeon watches and watches and watches. Younger Jessica is right – it was always the schedules; they’ve always just had bad timing.

Is that all it took?

She’s indifferent. She doesn’t miss her.

(She’s a liar.)

\---

And then, suddenly, she’s not there. Taeyeon looks around her at the airport and only sees seven drawn faces walking with her. Not unusual – they’ve often traveled in fractured groups, coming and going at different hours to accommodate all of the different individual schedules.

But the machine has decided it’s no longer going to be so accommodating, because when she gets up on stage and looks down the row, they’re still one short. Everything is off, and it shows. Taeyeon smiles through it anyway.

She hates that she was right before – none of them may be cogs after all this time, but they’re still parts. (And the more time goes on, the more she sees that the shine is beginning to wear.) All parts have a role, and all parts are replaceable. She guesses that parts aren’t supposed to find new roles for themselves outside of the machine, because now one’s come loose and been switched out completely.

Except nothing has been switched back in. And it’s not just any part, it’s _Jessica,_ and after all these years Taeyeon doesn’t know how the machine hasn’t just collapsed when it’s missing something, _someone_ so important.

(Her head knows. The thing in her chest doesn’t always follow along so well.)

It falls to her, of course, to speak. The role that she’s never wanted, that she’s never felt worthy of, demands more of her than ever.

She reads the comments. They all beg for answers.

Taeyeon speaks. Instead of answers, she gives them practiced statements.

 _We’ll be stronger in the future_ , she keeps telling them, even as she feels the rust begin to cling and scratch inside of her. She doesn’t care. She smiles through it all: the questions, the demands, the absence. Taeyeon doesn’t care anymore.

The charade reminds her of something Tiffany used to shout at her when they were kids. An old American rhyme, borrowed from a distant past.

_Liar, liar, pants on fire!_

If the rhyme were true, Taeyeon’s legs would’ve burned a long time ago.

 


End file.
